- February 6, 2009
- 12:00 AM
- 1,128 views
On Ants & Butterflies
by Edward Baker in Invertebrate Diaries
This post marks the beginning of something I've been meaning to start for a long time: blogging about peer-reviewed research. The Research Blogging site has some cool features for doing this, and so this is a bit of an experiment into how all of that works.The first paper is on ants, an invertebrate certainly, but not one I'm an expert on. The reason it appealed to me, I think, boils down to seeing a talk by Bert Hölldobler (of Hölldobler & Wilson fame) recently at the Natural History Museum. ........ Read more »
Francesca Barbero, Jeremy A Thomas, Simona Bonelli, Emilio Balletto, & Karsten Schönrogge. (2009) Queen Ants Make Distinctive Sounds That Are Mimicked by a Butterfly Social Parasite. Science, 782.
- February 6, 2009
- 12:00 AM
- 1,773 views
Sex Sells - But I Do Not Buy All Evolutionary Explanations
by Stijn Ruiter in Your Sixth Degree
Review of The association between men's ratings of women as desirable long-term mates and individual differences in women's sexual attitudes and behavior.... Read more »
L CAMPBELL, L CRONK, J SIMPSON, A MILROY, C WILSON, & B DUNHAM. (2009) The association between men’s ratings of women as desirable long-term mates and individual differences in women’s sexual attitudes and behaviors. Personality and Individual Differences, 46(4), 509-513. DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2008.12.001
- February 6, 2009
- 12:00 AM
- 1,009 views
Influenza vaccine - hold the eggs
by Vincent Racaniello in virology blog
Influenza virus undergoes continuous antigenic variation, necessitating production of a new vaccine each year. This is not a trivial task. Six to nine months before the flu season begins, the viral strains for inclusion in the vaccine must be selected. High-yielding recombinant strains are produced and grown in embryonated chicken eggs. This year, approximately 140 [...]... Read more »
DEFILETTE, M., MARTENS, W., SMET, A., SCHOTSAERT, M., BIRKETT, A., LONDONOARCILA, P., FIERS, W., & SAELENS, X. (2008) Universal influenza A M2e-HBc vaccine protects against disease even in the presence of pre-existing anti-HBc antibodies. Vaccine, 26(51), 6503-6507. DOI: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2008.09.038
Fu, T., Grimm, K., Citron, M., Freed, D., Fan, J., Keller, P., Shiver, J., Liang, X., & Joyce, J. (2009) Comparative immunogenicity evaluations of influenza A virus M2 peptide as recombinant virus like particle or conjugate vaccines in mice and monkeys. Vaccine, 27(9), 1440-1447. DOI: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2008.12.034
- February 5, 2009
- 11:23 PM
- 2,051 views
Frequent and influential exposure of medical students to pharmaceutical marketing
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
In this recent study most of the third year medical students (91,2%) were exposed to any drug marketing type, and 56.8% of students were exposed to all classes of marketing methods. This made the medical students less sensitive to the negative effects of and having positive opinions about interactions with pharmaceutical companies. Want to know [...]... Read more »
Ozlem Sarikaya, Murat Civaner, & Kevser Vatansever. (2009) Exposure of medical students to pharmaceutical marketing in primary care settings: frequent and influential. Advances in Health Sciences Education. DOI: 10.1007/s10459-009-9153-7
- February 5, 2009
- 10:14 PM
- 1,653 views
New research on bedbug insecticide resistance
by bug_girl in Bug Girl's Blog
Since I mentioned bedbugs recently, I thought I would also cover this paper:
Kyong Sup Yoon, Deok Ho Kwon, Joseph P. Strycharz, Craig S. Hollingsworth, Si Hyeock Lee, J. Marshall Clark (2008). Biochemical and Molecular Analysis of Deltamethrin Resistance in the Common Bed Bug (Hemiptera: Cimicidae) Journal of Medical Entomology, 45 (6), 1092-1101 DOI: 10.1603/0022-2585(2008)45[1092:BAMAOD]2.0.CO;2
One of [...]... Read more »
Kyong Sup Yoon, Deok Ho Kwon, Joseph P. Strycharz, Craig S. Hollingsworth, Si Hyeock Lee, & J. Marshall Clark. (2008) Biochemical and Molecular Analysis of Deltamethrin Resistance in the Common Bed Bug (Hemiptera: Cimicidae). Journal of Medical Entomology, 45(6), 1092-1101. DOI: 10.1603/0022-2585(2008)45[1092:BAMAOD]2.0.CO;2
- February 5, 2009
- 08:45 PM
- 1,736 views
The genetics of synaesthesia
by Mo in Neurophilosophy
When Sir Francis Galton first described the "peculiar habit of mind" we now call synaesthesia, he noted that it often runs in families. Modern techniques have confirmed that the condition does indeed have a strong genetic component - more than 40% of synaesthetes have a first-degree relative - a parent, sibling or offspring - who also has synaesthesia, and families often contain multiple synaesthetes.
Synaesthesia is known to affect females more than males, and although the female predominance ........ Read more »
Julian E. Asher,1,2,* Janine A. Lamb,3 Denise Brocklebank,1 Jean-Baptiste Cazier, Elena Maestrini,, & Laura Addis, Mallika Sen, Simon Baron-Cohen, and Anthony P. Monaco. (2009) A Whole-Genome Scan and Fine-Mapping Linkage Study of Auditory-Visual Synesthesia Reveals Evidence of Linkage to Chromosomes 2q24, 5q33, 6p12, and 12p12. TheAmericanJournal ofHumanGenetics.
Julian E. Asher,1,2,* Janine A. Lamb,3 Denise Brocklebank,1 Jean-Baptiste Cazier, Elena Maestrini,, & Laura Addis, Mallika Sen, Simon Baron-Cohen, and Anthony P. Monaco. (2009) A Whole-Genome Scan and Fine-Mapping Linkage Study of Auditory-Visual Synesthesia Reveals Evidence of Linkage to Chromosomes 2q24, 5q33, 6p12, and 12p12. TheAmericanJournal ofHumanGenetics.
Julian E. Asher,1,2,* Janine A. Lamb,3 Denise Brocklebank,1 Jean-Baptiste Cazier, Elena Maestrini,, & Laura Addis, Mallika Sen, Simon Baron-Cohen, and Anthony P. Monaco. (2009) A Whole-Genome Scan and Fine-Mapping Linkage Study of Auditory-Visual Synesthesia Reveals Evidence of Linkage to Chromosomes 2q24, 5q33, 6p12, and 12p12. TheAmericanJournal ofHumanGenetics.
- February 5, 2009
- 08:04 PM
- 1,903 views
Study on voluntary vaccination reveals interesting complexities
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
When word of this study gets around, you may start to hear that voluntary vaccination "works." This would not be an accurate statement. There is a new study just now out in PLoS Computational Biology that reveals that under certain conditions, which may actually be quite rare, voluntary vaccinations might lead to the eradication of a disease (contrary to 'popular wisdom'). However, you must realize that the study has some important limitations and the results do not suggest that most (if any)........ Read more »
Perisic A, Bauch CT. (2009) Social Contact Networks and Disease Eradicability under Voluntary Vaccination. PLoS Comput Biol , 5(2). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000280
- February 5, 2009
- 06:02 PM
- 1,686 views
Is the Earth's magnetic field about to flip?
by Chris Rowan in Highly Allochthonous
[Note: this was originally intended for the latest edition of The Accretionary Wedge, now up at Clastic Detritus, which asked the geoblogosphere to look to the geological future. Sadly, it took much longer than I thought it would, and is therefore a bit late - but what's a few days to a geologist?]
It's fairly common knowledge that the Earth's magnetic field periodically reverses its polarity. At the moment, magnetic field lines run from the south pole to the north pole, and point up in the so........ Read more »
Jean-Pierre Valet, Laure Meynadier, & Yohan Guyodo. (2005) Geomagnetic dipole strength and reversal rate over the past two million years. Nature, 435(7043), 802-805. DOI: 10.1038/nature03674
M KNUDSEN, P RIISAGER, F DONADINI, I SNOWBALL, R MUSCHELER, K KORHONEN, & L PESONEN. (2008) Variations in the geomagnetic dipole moment during the Holocene and the past 50 kyr. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 272(1-2), 319-329. DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2008.04.048
- February 5, 2009
- 06:00 PM
- 1,117 views
In the Journals - Chemical evidence of multicellular life 635 million years ago
by GrumpyBob in Flies and Bikes
A paper in the current issue of Nature [Love et al (2009) Nature 457; 718-722] suggests that multicellular life existed about 100 million years before the explosion of bilaterian animals in the Cambrian. The evidence comes from analysis of rocks from the Arabian peninsula, in which geologically preserved derivatives of characteristic chemicals have been detected. Now [...]... Read more »
Gordon D. Love, Emmanuelle Grosjean, Charlotte Stalvies, David A. Fike, John P. Grotzinger, Alexander S. Bradley, Amy E. Kelly, Maya Bhatia, William Meredith, Colin E. Snape.... (2009) Fossil steroids record the appearance of Demospongiae during the Cryogenian period. Nature, 457(7230), 718-721. DOI: 10.1038/nature07673
- February 5, 2009
- 05:34 PM
- 1,177 views
Letting bacteria work for you
by nuclear.kelly in Miss Atomic Bomb
In a fascinating paper just published in Physical Review Letters (January of this year), a small research group from the University of Rome describes their elaborate numerical simulations of micromotors (micron-scale gears, essentially) in a chaotic bacterial bath.For some time, microscopic motors, driven by tiny mule-teams of bacteria or other self-propelling entities, have been considered an interesting and plausible way of converting chemical energy to useful mechanical energy. The PRL descr........ Read more »
Luca Angelani, Roberto Di Leonardo, & Giancarlo Ruocco. (2009) Self-Starting Micromotors in a Bacterial Bath. Physical Review Letters, 102(4). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.048104
- February 5, 2009
- 05:22 PM
- 1,103 views
The MOC “book”: Surface Patterns and Properties
by Ryan in The Martian Chronicles
Welcome to part 2 of our attempt at tackling The Beast. If you missed Part 1, check it out here. We are working our way, slowly but surely, through the monstrous 2001 Mars Orbital Camera paper by Malin and Edgett. This paper summarizes the results from MOC, which revolutionized the scientific community’s view of Mars. [...]... Read more »
M.C. Malin, & K.S. Edgett. (2001) Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera: Interplanetary cruise through primary mission. Journal of Geophysical Research - Planets, 106(10), 23429-23570.
- February 5, 2009
- 04:48 PM
- 969 views
Birds Have Theropod wings
by Ville Sinkkonen in Dots in Deep Time
Interesting new study published in Paleobiology. The authors of this paper tracked morphological character changes in forelimb+pectoral girdle trough theropod evolution. The pattern that emerges shows three distinct punctuations where number of character changes is higher than the normal trend. These punctuations occur in Tenanurans, Eumaniraptorans and Ornithothoraces. Noticed it yet? Aves is not among the punctuations. Indeed between Eumaniraptora and Aves there seems to be stasis with Little........ Read more »
T. Alex Dececchi, Hans C. E. Larsson. (2009) Patristic evolutionary rates suggest a punctuated pattern in forelimb evolution before and after the origin of birds. Paleobiology, 35(1), 1-12. DOI: http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1666/07079.1
- February 5, 2009
- 02:01 PM
- 968 views
Colours affect mental performance, with blue boosting creativity
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Paint the walls blue to boost your creativity. That's the message from an intriguing new study that shows the contrasting effects of blue and red on mental performance.Psychologists have known for some time that colours can affect cognition, but research in the area has produced contradictory results. For example, some studies have shown red to be beneficial while others have found the opposite.Ravi Mehta and Rui (Juliet) Zhu believe the contrasting results have arisen from the fact that red is ........ Read more »
Ravi Mehta, & Rui (Juliet) Zhu. (2009) Blue or Red? Exploring the Effect of Color on Cognitive Task Performances. Science.
- February 5, 2009
- 01:48 PM
- 1,553 views
What Pac-Man tells us about how we recognize shapes
by Dave Munger in Cognitive Daily
Have you seen this "illusion" before?
The arrangement of the pacman shapes leads you to perceive rectangles, which are actually just empty spaces between the pacmen (that's a technical term -- it's in a journal article, so it must science!). Technically the rectangles are called "Kanizsa-type subjective contours," because while we perceive rectangles, there aren't actually rectangles there. It's a powerful effect, and once you see the shapes, it's difficult to look at the picture without percei........ Read more »
X. LI, K. R. CAVE, & J. M. WOLFE. (2008) Kanizsa-type subjective contours do not guide attentional deployment in visual search but line termination contours do. Perception , 70(3), 477-488. DOI: 10.3758/pp.70.3.477
- February 5, 2009
- 01:15 PM
- 1,130 views
Is Obesity Contagious?
by Shaheen Lakhan in Brain Blogger
The worldwide prevalence of obesity has increased dramatically in the last several decades. Obesity is a significant public health problem in most developed countries and carries with it substantial morbidity and mortality. The most commonly implicated causes of obesity are well known: poor diet, lack of physical activity, and genetic predisposition. There are also other [...]... Read more »
Richard Atkinson. (2008) Could viruses contribute to the worldwide epidemic of obesity?. International Journal of Pediatric Obesity, 37-43. DOI: 10.1080/17477160801896754
Magdalena Pasarica, Nazar Mashtalir, Emily J. McAllister, Gail E. Kilroy, Juraj Koska, Paska Permana, Barbora de Courten, Minghuan Yu, Eric Ravussin, Jeffery M. Gimble.... (2008) Adipogenic Human Adenovirus Ad-36 Induces Commitment, Differentiation, and Lipid Accumulation in Human Adipose-Derived Stem Cells. Stem Cells, 26(4), 969-978. DOI: 10.1634/stemcells.2007-0868
P M Rogers, K A Fusinski, M A Rathod, S A Loiler, M Pasarica, M K Shaw, G Kilroy, G M Sutton, E J McAllister, N Mashtalir.... (2007) Human adenovirus Ad-36 induces adipogenesis via its E4 orf-1 gene. International Journal of Obesity, 32(3), 397-406. DOI: 10.1038/sj.ijo.0803748
V VANGINNEKEN, L SITNYAKOWSKY, & J JEFFERY. (2009) “Infectobesity: viral infections (especially with human adenovirus-36: Ad-36) may be a cause of obesity. Medical Hypotheses. DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2008.11.034
S D Vangipuram, M Yu, J Tian, K L Stanhope, M Pasarica, P J Havel, A R Heydari, & N V Dhurandhar. (2006) Adipogenic human adenovirus-36 reduces leptin expression and secretion and increases glucose uptake by fat cells. International Journal of Obesity, 31(1), 87-96. DOI: 10.1038/sj.ijo.0803366
A Vasilakopoulou, & C W le Roux. (2007) Could a virus contribute to weight gain?. International Journal of Obesity, 31(9), 1350-1356. DOI: 10.1038/sj.ijo.0803623
- February 5, 2009
- 12:58 PM
- 849 views
Draft Neanderthal genome next week
by Jeremy Yoder in Denim and Tweed
Nature News reports that the first complete genome sequence for a Neanderthal will be released, appropriately enough, on next Thursday, the 12th of February, and the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth. It's the same group at the Max Planck Institute that released the first million bases of Neanderthal nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequence [$-a] back in 2006. As in the earlier work, the... Read more »
R.E. Green, J.Krause, S.E. Ptak, A.W. Briggs, M.T. Ronan, J.F. Simons, L. Du, M. Egholm, J.M. Rothberg, M. Paunovic.... (2006) Analysis of one million base pairs of Neanderthal DNA. Nature, 444(7117), 330-6. DOI: 10.1038/nature05336
- February 5, 2009
- 12:48 PM
- 1,757 views
A new link in the chain of whale evolution
by Christie Wilcox in Observations of a Nerd
Paleontologists have found a new fossil of a whale ancestor - and its announced just after I finish watching my preview DVD of Nat Geo's Morphed on whale evolution. I smell fate.Anyhow, the new whale predecessor was unveiled in a PLoS One article this week. Donned "Maiacetus inuus", the species is described from two adult fossil finds, and reveals even more about whales evolved.Maiacetus inuus is a new species of Protocetid whale, roughly 2.6 m long and dated to be about 47.5 million years old......... Read more »
Philip D. Gingerich, Munir ul-Haq, Wighart von Koenigswald, William J. Sanders, B. Holly Smith, & Iyad S. Zalmout. (2009) New Protocetid Whale from the Middle Eocene of Pakistan: Birth on Land, Precocial Development, and Sexual Dimorphism. PLoS ONE, 4(2). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0004366
- February 5, 2009
- 10:08 AM
- 1,455 views
Mutation Patterns in the Human Genome are More Variable Than Expected
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
I want to bring your attention to a somewhat dense and possibly inconclusive (but important) paper accompanied by a very informative overview in PLoS Biology, concerning mutations in the human genome.
Mutation rates and patterns of mutation are important for a number of reasons. For one thing, the genome itself is a data set that is both broad and deep. There is a lot of information in a given individual genome (a haploid set of genes from a person, for instance) but there is a wide range of ........ Read more »
Alan Hodgkinson, Emmanuel Ladoukakis, & Adam Eyre-Walker. (2009) Cryptic Variation in the Human Mutation Rate. PLoS Biology, 7(2). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000027
Laurent Duret. (2009) Mutation Patterns in the Human Genome: More Variable Than Expected. PLoS Biology, 7(2). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000028
- February 5, 2009
- 08:43 AM
- 1,575 views
Sponges lived on the snowball Earth
by Lab Lemming in Lounge of the Lab Lemming
The results I briefly mentioned hearing the preliminary talk for in Melbourne 3 years ago have just been published in Nature.
Short version: Sponges evolved before the end of the Marinoan “Snowball Earth” glaciation, and were common from then through the Ediacaran and into the Cambrian.
How they did it:
As anyone who is conscious about healthy food knows, animal fat contains lots of... Read more »
Gordon D. Love, Emmanuelle Grosjean, Charlotte Stalvies, David A. Fike, John P. Grotzinger, Alexander S. Bradley, Amy E. Kelly, Maya Bhatia, William Meredith, Colin E. Snape.... (2009) Fossil steroids record the appearance of Demospongiae during the Cryogenian period. Nature, 457(7230), 718-721. DOI: 10.1038/nature07673
- February 5, 2009
- 05:00 AM
- 1,004 views
The hantavirus N protein strikes again
by vrr in virology blog
In “Hantavirus protein replaces eIF4F” we discussed how the binding of hantavirus N protein to the 5′-cap structure on mRNA replaces the translation complex eIF4F. A second research group has revealed yet another function for this interaction: the N protein sequesters mRNA caps in P bodies, for subsequent use during the initiation of viral mRNA [...]... Read more »
M. A. Mir, W. A. Duran, B. L. Hjelle, C. Ye, & A. T. Panganiban. (2008) Storage of cellular 5' mRNA caps in P bodies for viral cap-snatching. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(49), 19294-19299. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0807211105
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